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ITV is banking on Torvill and Dean to win the Christmas Day ratings battle, with a drama about their victory at the 1984 Winter Olympics.

The broadcaster has scheduled the drama against BBC One’s EastEnders and Mrs Brown’s Boys Christmas special, hoping that viewers will be caught up in a wave of nostalgia for the couple’s gold medal-winning performance of Bolero.

Poppy Lee Friar and Will Tudor will star as Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, and the two-hour film will chart their “private, intense relationship”. It is written by William Ivory, the screenwriter behind Made in Dagenham.

While ITV tries something new, BBC One is sticking to a tried and tested formula. Its Christmas Day line-up includes special editions of Strictly Come Dancing and Call the Midwife, with the 2016 live-action version of The Jungle Book as the showpiece family film.

A British audience of 24 million watched Torvill and Dean dance to victory in SarajevoCredit:
Getty Images

The BBC will show its Poirot mystery, The ABC Murders, from Boxing Day. Two major adaptations of old works will begin either side of Christmas on BBC One: Watership Down on December 22 and Les Miserables on December 30.

The corporation is also adding 100 box sets to iPlayer for the festive player, a measure begun last year to compete with Netflix and Amazon.

Viewers will be able to rewatch Bodyguard, McMafia, Luther and Killing Eve, and every series of the comedies Outnumbered, Miranda and Extras.

In the build-up to Andrew Davies’s adaptation of Les Miserables, his previous period dramas will be available to view, House of Cards, War and Peace, and perhaps his most famous work of all, the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice featuring Colin Firth in a wet shirt.

Charlotte Moore, the BBC’s director of content, said: “It is a very special collection of British programming that we know people will love, and a chance for everybody to spoil themselves with some real treats over the Christmas period.”